Revisions to the CUE Guide, online course registration and a controversial proposal to change the title of the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies were among the topics discussed at the Committee on Undergraduate Education’s (CUE) first meeting of the year yesterday.

CUE member Matt J. Glazer ’05 presented the results of a survey conducted among undergraduates regarding last year’s CUE Guide—which contains statistical and qualitative information about classes and professors.

He said students had asked for more information; specifically, for the names of Teaching Fellows who received negative evaluations and for some kind of grading statistics to be printed.

The CUE agreed that the Faculty Council would discuss the issue further at its next meeting.

The Committee also discussed the possibility of moving CUE evaluation forms online. Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said that such a transition could be helpful because it would mean an increased ability to tailor the form to different classes.

Gross said the main problem with online forms is response rates. Without holding students captive in a classroom to fill out the evaluations, members worried, fewer people might complete them.

The response rate last year in College courses was about 70 percent, according to Administrator in Undergraduate Education Deborah B. Green.

“We have talked about moving from paper evaluations to online evaluations as early as next fall,” she said.

Newly arrived Registrar Barry Kane said that Yale—his former employer—had experienced mixed results with an online evaluation program it piloted.

“The substance of remarks has been incredibly detailed,” Kane said. “On the flip side, the response rate went way down.”

When Yale implemented the program officially, Kane said that along with a publicity campaign, the school also implemented a rule that no student would be able to view a grade for a class online if he or she had not completed an evaluation for that class. For two semesters, he said, Yale saw a response rate of 87 percent.

Following the discussion of the CUE Guide, Student Affairs Committee (SAC) Vice-chair Sheila R. Adams ’05 delivered a proposal for putting the course registration system—as well as a mechanism for adding and dropping classes—online.

“You’re required to get the signatures of your senior tutor, your concentration tutor, and if you’re adding, your professor. We have to reexamine our rationale for having it the way we do now. Students do see it as an inconvenience,” said Adams, who said the SAC is still in the opinion-gathering stage, and has not yet endorsed the idea.

In her talk, Adams cited Princeton and Stanford as examples of schools which allow students to register online.

CUE members were concerned, however, about implementing such a system at Harvard.